At the time of this writing, we are slightly more than 36 hours from the long anticipated landing of the Phoenix on the cold surface of the Norther polar region of Mars. At least we hope it’s a landing, as opposed to an impact. There is nothing simple about pulling off a landing on the red planet and, to date, we are running about a fifty percent success rate. The spectacular achievements of the twin rovers often make us forget the loss of several other landers which plunged into the Martian atmosphere out of control, never to be heard from again. Having already traveled more than 420 million miles, Phoenix is scheduled to land shortly before 8 PM eastern time on Sunday night.
Phoenix will land in an area where orbital surveys have shown large quantities of water just under the surface of the Martian soil. As more and more data has been gathered, hopes have dimmed that we will find any sort of life on the planet. If we ever do, it is likely to be bacterial or microbial in nature, deep under the surface. The Phoenix has two primary goals, assuming a safe, soft touchdown: to study the history of water in the Martian arctic and search for evidence of a habitable zone and assess the biological potential of the ice-soil boundary.
This is the type of information we will need if we are ever to put manned missions on the red planet. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope for a safe landing. There will be live coverage of the event on CNN and, with luck, we should have the first pictures back within an hour of the landing.